SELF-DECEPTION: NEW ANGLES INTRODUCTION

It is no wonder that self-deception has always sparked philosophers’ interest. Self-deception is a very intriguing phenomenon from both the descriptive and the normative points of view. First, self-deception raises a number of descriptive problems. Should we model self-deception on others’ deception and hold that the self-deceived subject intends to deceive herself? Or should we rather—granted that some motivational state must be part of the self-deceptive process—identify self-deception’s motivational cause with a desire? Famously enough, the classical opposition between intentionalist (e.g., Davidson, 1986) and deflationist accounts (e.g., Mele, 1997, 2001; Nelkin, 2002) of self-deception revolves around these questions. Intentionalist and deflationist accounts face different sorts of worries and each seems to succeed where the other fails. For instance, deflationism has been accused of not faring as well as intentionalism with regards to the selectivity problem (Talbott, 1995). For its part, intentionalism—mostly because it does not allow the self-deceptive process to take place unknowingly—has been charged of raising paradoxes (the well-known “static” and “dynamic” paradoxes; see, e.g., Mele, 2001). Furthermore, self-deception typically involves a certain epistemic discomfort or tension (Funkhouser, 2005; Noordhof, 2009; Van Leeuwen, 2007). Subjects do not hold self-deceptive beliefs in the simple, wholehearted way in which they hold their other, non-self-deceptive beliefs. Most often, doubts nag at the back of their minds and prevent them from being completely at ease with their beliefs. Another descriptive problem is to explain this tension. Self-deception is also normatively fascinating. Self-deception is often considered to be an irrational cognitive phenomenon. But what makes it irrational? Is it not, at least occasionally, acceptable to deceive oneself? According to Joseph Butler (1726/2006) and Adam Smith (1759/2002), self-deception is always morally reprehensible, mainly because we get used to casting a too-favourable light on the morality of our own actions by self-deceiving ourselves about them. This gradually corrupts our moral judgment and prevents us for correcting our moral mistakes. Much more recently, Van Leeuwen (2009) has claimed that self-deception is not even “egoistically good” since it does not make us happy. In contrast, Barnes (1997) has argued that in some sufficiently difficult or costly circumstances, “the avoidance of a painful truth” (chapter 9, p. 165) is not always prima facie morally bad (even though, according to Barnes, the epistemic cowardice that goes along with self-deception is prima facie objectionable). Additionally, several psychologists and neuroscientists (see, e.g., Sharot, 2011; Taylor, 1989) have emphasized the positive effects that (positive) self-deceptive evaluations of ourselves have on our mental health. These evaluations even seem able to promote our ability “to care about others” and “to engage in productive and creative work” (Taylor and Brown, 1988, p. 193). While the first four papers included in this special issue address some descriptive issues raised by self-deception, the last two articles deal rather with normative questions surrounding it. Pedrini’s paper “Liberalizing Self-Deception: Replacing ‘Paradigmatic State Accounts’ of Self-Deception with a Dynamic View of the Self-Deceptive Process” suggests a change of paradigm. Philosophers should give up the “snapshot” conception of self-deception—that is, the currently prevailing assumption that self-deception is a stative phenomenon. Pedrini suggests that we should replace this classical conception with a dynamic and processual account. According to her proposal, self-deception is a process that is susceptible to including what she describes as “a multitude of highly tensive and unstable mental states” that are not only cognitive but also conative and affective. The purpose of Hubbs’s contribution is also to illuminate the very nature of self-deception. In line with Barnes’s anxiety-avoidance account, he argues that self-deception results from the “tendency of the mind to avoid thinking unpleasant thoughts.” An additional, and to …